Saturday, April 20

We left this morning, headed to Venice to board our cruise ship. On the way, we stopped at the Villa Giusti outside of Verona. This villa served as a temporary home to King Victor Emmanuel III during World War I. He served from 1900 to May, 1946, when he abdicated in favor of his son, Umberto II. The Italian monarchy was dissolved shortly thereafter, in June of the same year.

Giardino Guisti (Guisti Garden) preserves the tone of past gardens with its architecture and its references to mythology and the classical war. The garden is laid out in the “giardina all italiano” style, with nine square sections. A central path, lined with cypress, took us to the upper levels where the Belvedere is located. A belvedere is a building with a view, from the Italian words “bel” (beautiful) and “vedere” (view.) We climbed the 50 steps of the belvedere, and the views were indeed beautiful. We could see much of Verona from there. We would have enjoyed spending more time at this lovely oasis, but it was time to head to the ship.

Later in the day, we arrived at the cruise port outside of Venice. On our first cruise to Venice, in November, 2012, we docked on the northeast side of the island. Since, then, the Italian government has declared that all cruise ships must use alternate locations outside of Venice, to help preserve the Venetian Lagoon, so we boarded the ship in Chioggia, south of the Lagoon.

We experienced record level flooding during that November, 2012 visit, almost five feet. Since then, there have been four events with higher levels, the highest so far being in November, 2022, at over 6.5 feet. At that time, we had learned about MOSE (Experimental Electromechanical Module,) a project designed to protect Venice from the ever-increasing levels of flooding. A smaller version was in place already to protect Chioggia, but the larger one, begun in 2003, is scheduled for completion in 2025. It has been used already, 49 times since it was first tested in 2020. The project is designed to protect Venice up to 3 meters (almost 10 feet.) It will be activated any time the tide is forecast to be 1.3 meters or higher (just over 4 feet.)

We had the option of walking into Chioggia before dinner, but opted to try to settle into our cabin instead. Living out of a suitcase gets old pretty fast. This turned out to be a good decision, as a drenching storm came in the late afternoon.

We cast off from the Chioggia dock after dinner. Our cabin is at the far aft (rear) end of the boat, which gave us an opportunity to watch the tug help guide us out into the Adriatic Sea.